Dig Deeper: Should I Buy an E-mail List?
Do: Use a third-party e-mail system. Don't: Try to manage your e-mail lists yourself.
The experts agreed that third-party e-mail companies are essential for managing your e-mail lists and maintaining the quality of the lists and the e-mails you send. They will help to verify the e-mail addresses and information about your subscribers. They also offer valuable information about bounce-backs, which opened and clicked on what, subscriptions and opt-outs, getting your company on white lists and checking your e-mail messages against spam filters.
Dig Deeper: See a Comparison of E-mail Management Companies
Do: Include advertising in regular company e-mails. Don't: Miss a marketing opportunity.
Most companies ignore the most obvious way to advertise and promote the company – e-mails sent regularly by employees during the course of doing business. You can make every e-mail that an employee sends out a part of your marketing effort by including ads and embedded links. The e-mails are more targeted because they are between people that know each other or who are doing business with each other. There are several companies that provide these e-mail enhancement services for as little as $5 a month.
Dig Deeper: E-mails That Sell
Do: Sign-up for competitors e-mails similar to your own. Don't: Underestimate the competition.
"Competitive intelligence should be part of the process, as it may save you valuable time and resources," says Lee Traupel, CEO of Linked Media Group based in Penn Valley, California. The easiest and most cost effective way to do that is to sign up for your competitors' newsletters. You should keep track of what they are saying, how they are crafting their e-mails and implementing best practices in to your own e-mails.
Dig Deeper: How to Keep Tabs on the Competition
Do: Include strong calls-to-action. Don't: Make it difficult for subscribers to get more information or act on it.
First you want your subscribers to open the e-mail but after they open it what they do next is the most important. "Using links in calls-to-action that take readers to custom landing pages with more information - and more calls-to action - can be very helpful," said Heidi Cool, owner of the Web design and strategy company HeidiCool.com. "They guide the reader forward – towards your goal – and make it easier to track your success." Sherrie Mersdorf, database marketing analyst at Cvent in McLean, Virginia, warns, "You don't want your calls-to-action to only be in pictures since many clients block images by default. Your message is likely to be deleted before it is even read."
Dig Deeper: 14 Common-Sense E-mail Marketing Rules
Do: Test, test, and test again. Don't: Get complacent.
What works for one company may not work for another. Also, your clients' and customers' responses to your e-mails could change over time. You have to continue to test and make changes to your e-mail strategy to optimize success. Experts advise testing everything from the time of day you send e-mail, what days of the week they are sent, display in different e-mail clients to which subject lines you use. Gerry Black, a marketing consultant and writer and based in Toronto shares his method for testing e-mail subject lines and increasing open rates.
"Create your e-mail promotion and write out three subject lines. Take your best subject line and include it with your first e-mail. Let's say you e-mail 1,000 people and 150 open it. Delete those names off your "send" list and re-send the e-mail using a different subject line. Once your open results come back from the second e-mail, delete those names and do your third e-mail using your third subject line. You could triple the amount of people who open your e-mail by using this strategy."
Black did this with a client and he shared the actual results. The first e-mail was sent to 306 recipients of whom 84 people opened it. The second e-mail was sent to 222 recipients of whom 38 people opened it. The last e-mail was sent to the remainder of the e-mail list. Twenty people opened that. The same e-mail with different subject lines was sent to 306 people and was opened by 142 people for an open rate of 46 percent.
The caution in doing this is that you have to carefully time when you send the e-mails. You don't want all the e-mails to be sent on the same day as your customers and clients might notice your strategy.
Of course, some effective tactics vary from business to business.
"When it comes to e-mail, there are lots of dos and don'ts, although the No. 1 don't is don't take anyone else's word for what works and what doesn't," Premick says. "Test for yourself."
Dig Deeper: The Most Important E-mail Marketing Tactic of All
Dos and Don'ts of E-Mail Marketing: Additional Resources
E-mail Marketing Reports, edited by independent journalist Mark Brownlow.
Permission Marketing: Turning Strangers Into Friends And Friends Into Customers by Seth Godin.
The Constant Contact Guide to E-mail Marketing by Eric Groves.
Web Marketing All-in-One Desk Reference For Dummies by John Arnold, Ian Lurie, Marty Dickinson, and Elizabeth Marsten.
